Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/399

Rh and despotism dwarf, and stunt, and despoil of their power all the evil passions of men, no less than their nobler impulses. In this country all that is base and depraved in the human heart has such full liberty and wide compass, and hot stimulus of action, as has never been known before. Wickedness no less than virtue: diabolism no less than utilitarianism, has its steam engines, and its power-presses and its lightning telegraphs. Those external restraints of blind reverence for authority, and superstitious dread of religious guides, and fiery penal codes, which once repressed the passions of man, and paralysed all energy, are now lifted off. If internal and moral restraints be not substituted for the external and arbitrary ones that are removed, the people instead of being conquerors and sovereigns over their passions, will be their victims and their slaves. Even the clearest revelations from heaven, and the sanctifying influences from God, unless vouchsafed to us so daily and momently as to supersede all volition and conscience of ours, would not preclude a virtuous training as an indispensable prerequisite to a happy and honourable life. He takes but a limited view of the influences and the efficacy of Christian Ethics, who does not strive to incorporate and mould them into the habits and sentiments of youth; who as fast as the juvenile mind opens to the perception of wonder and beauty, and of truth, has not exhaustless store of moral wonders and beauties, and truths, ready for transfusion into it.”

Thus speaks the President of the National Convention of the Friends of Education, the man of Education par excellence in North America. He is a Massachusetts man, and is, at the present time, Representative of the Pilgrim State in Congress.

You see the ground that he takes. The enlightenment of the moral and intellectual being by means of a school education, common to all, such is the foundation upon